The excuse that the Villages Hospital has an older demographic is belied by the fact that the Leesburg Hospital, run by the same people has a typical demographic and the same low rating. Those who praise Shands should be aware it is a three star CMS hospital, which makes it average using their criteria. Their poorest measure is readmission rate. Being a university teaching hospital means the sickest patients tend to go there which does impact outcome data. This is not true of our hospital where the sickest patients are often triaged elsewhere.
You can look at the CMS ratings
HERE
While patient surveys can be misleading.. The national average to the question "Would you recommend this hospital? is Yes 71% For The Villages it is 51% and Leesburg 62%
Shands in Gainesville is 82%. I would not suggest you only use CMS ratings in determining your hospitals of choice. It looks at a narrow set of outcome data. Patient satisfaction is skewed by how nice a room looks and how good the food tasted. In my opinion, and experience, patients are not particularly good at judging the quality of medical care.
I knew several doctors who were jerks but excellent clinicians, think Dr. House. When referring a patient to them I'd warn the family that experience might not be pleasant but I wanted the best medical outcome, and for their situation, I'd use Dr Jerk. If the pleasantness of the experience was important, I'd have an alternative suggestion.